Dutee Chand is an 18-year-old sprinter from India. She was on the roster for July’sCommonwealth Games until somebody at June’s Asian Junior Athletics Championship requested that she be tested for hyperandrogenism. Those tests revealed Chand to have a naturally occurring high testosterone level and she has been banned from competition.

Huh? If that isn't some **** huh?

Holy Moment

10/14/2014 4:38am,

Good thing they don't have this rule for men, or else Don Frye would've never had a career.

Bneterasedmynam

10/14/2014 8:40am,

What the ****?? Sorry, but you're naturally better than other athletes we can't have that. Bullshit like this is why the future of sports is doomed.

Devil

10/14/2014 1:11pm,

No love for chicks with dicks.

ermghoti

10/14/2014 2:24pm,

What the ****?? Sorry, but you're naturally better than other athletes we can't have that. Bullshit like this is why the future of sports is doomed.

I think it's more a matter of "your physiology can mask doping" than "you're naturally better."

Permalost

10/14/2014 2:34pm,

I think it's more a matter of "your physiology can mask doping" than "you're naturally better."

Sounds like my naturally huge pupils.

Holy Moment

10/14/2014 2:45pm,

Sounds like my naturally huge pupils.

http://media.ticketmaster.com/tm/en-us/dbimages/106399a.jpg

ChenPengFi

10/14/2014 2:47pm,

I think it's more a matter of "your physiology can mask doping" than "you're naturally better."

I think that's kind of hairsplitting when the drugs that would mask only confer the advantage she has naturally.

ermghoti

10/14/2014 2:56pm,

I think that's kind of hairsplitting when the drugs that would mask only confer the advantage she has naturally.

Well, yes. But the rule is pretty obviously intended to weed out dopers, not medical outliers.

What else are you going to do, quarantine each competitor under strict supervision, and test after a period of time to determine each individual's baseline testosterone level?

ChenPengFi

10/14/2014 3:10pm,

A cut off is too low if people can have that level naturally, seems like a more reasonable conclusion.

ghost55

10/14/2014 3:50pm,

Either way, banning her from competition is wrong.

It is Fake

10/14/2014 4:07pm,

What else are you going to do, quarantine each competitor under strict supervision, and test after a period of time to determine each individual's baseline testosterone level? So, you test her specifically to see if she is cheating or not. You give her a baseline test for her specific condition. They give medical exceptions for asthma sufferers who use steroid based medicine. If it is too high, they get stripped of their medal.

ermghoti

10/14/2014 4:27pm,

I'm not intimately familiar with testing procedures. If they are sophisticated enough to produce accurate results, then certainly governing bodies could make this policy for people of either sex with naturally high testosterone levels.

ghost55

10/14/2014 4:48pm,

I'm not intimately familiar with testing procedures. If they are sophisticated enough to produce accurate results, then certainly governing bodies could make this policy for people of either sex with naturally high testosterone levels.

That sets a bad precedent though. It stops being about not cheating and starts being about making everything exactly equal like in that Kurt Vonnegut short story.

goodlun

10/14/2014 4:58pm,

I say **** it let it stop being about genetics all together and just start allowing PEDs.

ermghoti

10/16/2014 1:53pm,

That sets a bad precedent though. It stops being about not cheating and starts being about making everything exactly equal like in that Kurt Vonnegut short story.

That's kind of the opposite of what I meant. If it's feasible, finding each individual's baseline testosterone and allowing a reasonable variance in subsequent testing is unrelated to Harrison Bergeron.